Correct Answer : ₹ 16,884 Crore
The State Bank of India (SBI) on Friday (4th August 2023) reported its highest-ever quarterly profit at ₹ 16,884 crore in the April-June quarter of 2023-24 -- a nearly three-fold jump over ₹ 6,068 crore in the year-ago period -- buoyed by a steep fall in bad loans and higher interest income.
On a consolidated basis, the bank's net income soared more than two-fold to ₹ 18,537 crore in the quarter from ₹ 7,325 crore a year ago. Total income was ₹ 1,32,333 crore in the period as against ₹ 94,524 crore in the April-June quarter of 2022-23.
On a sequential basis, some of the key numbers such as margins and net interest income showed marginal deterioration while loan loss provisions more than doubled, leading to SBI shares tanking nearly 3 per cent on bourses. This had an upset chairman Dinesh Khare opening his earnings address, wondering aloud why the markets and analysts look only at sequential numbers.
"For a bank, the first quarter is unique as most institutions hold back pay-outs or pay-ins to the last quarter of the fiscal year. In our case in the Q4 of FY23, we had ₹ 830 crore of interest income from a tax refund plus there are various other one-off gains, while in the first quarter has none of them at all.
"So a fair comparison is and should be annualised and not sequential; for other quarters I wouldn't mind a sequential comparison," the chairman told reporters at his headquarters here.
The bank counter, which has the highest market value among all the nearly three dozen central enterprises, closed 2.94 per cent down at ₹ 573.25 on the BSE after hitting a low of ₹ 571.50 intra-day with a market cap of ₹ 5.27 lakh crore.
In the March 2023 quarter (Q4FY23), the bank had booked ₹ 16,695 crore of net income, which on a sequential basis is only 1.14 per cent growth in the reporting quarter.
The bank's total income rose to ₹ 1,08,039 crore in the first quarter as against ₹ 74,989 crore. Of this, interest income printed in at ₹ 95,975 crore, 32.06 per cent more than the year-ago period, and the key net interest income clipped at 24.71 per cent to ₹ 38,905 crore, Mr Khare said..
Source : NDTV
